Every July, I put on holiday music, bake Christmas cookies, and spend a weekend getting ahead of the holiday season, all while most people are still in full summer mode. It sounds a little extra. It might be. But the system it builds is exactly what gets me through December with presence instead of panic.
And it turns out, the same logic applies to every marketing and communications leader staring down the Q4 budget season right now. The PESO Model® Operating System isn’t just a framework. It’s the planning infrastructure that makes the difference between a team that executes with confidence and one that improvises under pressure. Build the system now. Thank yourself in December.
Key Insights
- Starting your Q4 and annual planning in July isn’t premature; it’s the difference between building a system and surviving a season.
- Stakeholder alignment on goals before the calendar fills up is the professional equivalent of asking your family what they actually want out of the holidays, so no one ends up disappointed.
- Auditing your tools, channels, and capabilities now, while there’s still time to address gaps, beats discovering what’s broken when a campaign is already live.
- Budget spacing is a planning discipline, not just a finance conversation. Spreading investment decisions over time leads to smarter choices than compressing them into a frantic Q3 scramble.
- Testing what you don’t know works before you need to depend on it is one of the highest-leverage moves a communications team can make.
- The PESO Model® Operating System provides the planning infrastructure that turns Q4 from a reactive sprint into a coordinated, compounding campaign — but only if you build it before the pressure hits.
Before You Judge My Christmas in July Tradition, Hear Me Out
I know. I can already see your face.
It’s July. The sun is out, the grill is going, and somewhere in the background, someone just put on a holiday playlist.
That someone is me. And yes, there are also cookies in the oven.
If you just felt a small but distinct twitch of seasonal irritation, you’re not alone, and I respect it.
The Christmas in July industrial complex is not for everyone. The mall decorations before Halloween are genuinely a lot. I understand the impulse to defend summer from encroachment.
But stay with me for a moment. Because what I actually do every July has less to do with early tinsel and more to do with the thing that gets me through December without losing my mind.
What Christmas in July Actually Looks Like in My House
It starts with the right atmosphere. Holiday music on, a batch of cookies in the oven, and one of our favorite holiday movies queued up. The goal isn’t to skip summer—it’s to borrow just enough of that magical December feeling to make the planning work feel festive instead of like homework.
And then we get to work.
I take inventory of every holiday decoration we own. What’s in good shape, what’s worn out (including my tree in which half the lights don’t work), what broke last year and never got replaced, and what we’ve been meaning to upgrade for three seasons running.
I make the orders now, not in October when shipping timelines get unpredictable, and the specific thing I want is suddenly backordered until January.
I get my family aligned on what they actually want out of the holiday season. What traditions matter most this year? What do they want to make sure we don’t miss? What felt rushed or skipped last year that left someone quietly disappointed?
This conversation—had in July, without the pressure of a December calendar already filling up—is how we make sure everyone gets heard before the season gets away from us.
We start building gift lists. Both the ones we’ll share with family and friends, and the ones we’re building for others.
We set realistic budgets, and we start spacing our purchases so we’re not absorbing the entire financial hit in a six-week window. Some gifts get ordered in August. Some in September. By December, the scramble is mostly gone.
And then I go to Pinterest, and I find the recipes I want to try for holiday entertaining. Not to make in December, but to test now. Because the last thing I want is to be hosting a house full of people, running on four hours of sleep and three pots of coffee, experimenting with a recipe I’ve never made before, and hoping it works. (Spoiler: I’ve done that too many times.)
The whole weekend is built around one idea: I’m not celebrating early. I’m building the system that carries us through the season with presence instead of panic.
Here’s Where I’m Going to Lose the Rest of the Skeptics
If you’ve made it this far but you’re still not sure what any of this has to do with you, let me be direct.
It’s July. And if you’re a marketing or communications leader whose organization runs on a calendar fiscal year, your Q4 planning window is either already open or about to be. Budget proposals are forming. Annual strategies are getting drafted. Leadership is starting to ask what next year looks like.
And some teams are going to wait.
They’ll tell themselves they’ll get to it in September. By October, they’ll be reacting to the holiday campaign timeline instead of driving it. By November, they’ll be making budget decisions under pressure, approving tactics they haven’t tested, and running on a strategy that was assembled in a hurry.
Sound familiar? That’s the professional version of waiting until December 20th to figure out what everyone wants for the holidays and realizing the thing you needed has a three-week shipping delay.
The teams that execute Q4 confidently didn’t get lucky. They built the system before the pressure hit.
Five Things My Christmas in July Tradition Can Teach Your Planning Process
Take inventory before you need it.
I don’t wait until October to discover that half my string lights don’t work and the tree stand cracked. I find out in July, when I still have time to address it.
Your equivalent: audit your channels, tools, content, and team capabilities now.
What’s working? What’s been quietly underperforming for two quarters but never got addressed because there was always something more urgent? What broke during the last campaign that got patched instead of fixed? Find the gaps while you still have time to close them.
Align stakeholders on goals before the calendar fills up.
The conversation I have with my family in July—what do you want to make sure we actually do this holiday season?—only works because we’re having it before anyone is already overcommitted and stressed. This is a BIG one.
Leadership alignment on what success looks like for next year is infinitely easier in July than in October, when everyone is already heads-down on Q3. Get into the room with your key stakeholders now. Agree on the outcomes you’re building toward before the timeline pressure starts narrowing your options.
Build your budget to breathe, not to sprint.
Spacing out holiday purchases over five months instead of six weeks doesn’t just reduce stress; it leads to better decisions. When you’re not compressed, you’re not desperate. You evaluate options instead of grabbing whatever’s available.
The same is true for marketing budgets. Teams that distribute investment decisions thoughtfully across a planning period can make better choices than teams making the same decisions in a Q4 scramble. Know what you have, decide how you’re spending it, and give yourself the room to be strategic rather than reactive.
Align the whole team on priorities.
Not every holiday tradition can make the list every year. Neither can every campaign idea, channel investment, or content initiative. The Christmas in July conversation forces us to prioritize before we’re emotionally invested in being in the middle of it.
(I mean, all those Elf on the Shelf “magical experiences” don’t just happen.)
Marketing and communications leaders who do this work now, who get their teams aligned on what matters most before the budget is locked and the calendar is set, avoid the single most common source of Q4 dysfunction: everyone executing their own priorities because no one agreed on the shared ones. Gartner’s 2024 research even put a number on what that costs — organizations with high cross-functional misalignment are 37% less likely to hit their revenue targets.
Test the recipe before the guests arrive.
This is the one I feel most strongly about. I don’t experiment with an unknown recipe when I’m about to entertain [anymore]. I test it months ahead, note what needs adjusting, and make it again in December, knowing it works.
In a work context: don’t save your channel experiments, your new content formats, or your untested tactics for your biggest campaign of the year. Test them now, while the stakes are lower and the learning is cheaper. Q4 is not the time to find out that something doesn’t work.
This is What the PESO Model® Operating System is For
Each of these five moves—auditing capabilities, aligning stakeholders, distributing budget thoughtfully, aligning on priorities, and testing before you depend on something—is built into the PESO Model® Operating System when it’s running the way it’s designed to.
PESO isn’t a campaign framework you pull out when a launch is coming. It’s the operating system that connects paid, earned, shared, and owned media into one integrated system all year long. It has clear ownership, shared measurement, and the kind of compounding results that only happen when channels are designed to build on each other rather than run in parallel.
But it only delivers that when it’s already running before the pressure hits. The teams I’ve seen struggle most in Q4 aren’t struggling because they don’t know what PESO is. They’re struggling because they started building the system when they needed it instead of before they needed it.
Right now is your Christmas in July moment.
The season isn’t here yet. The pressure isn’t at full volume. You still have the planning runway to take inventory, align your stakeholders, set your budgets with intention, agree on your priorities, and test what you don’t yet know works.
Do it now, in the relative calm of midsummer, and December looks very different.
If you’re reading this with a Q4 calendar that’s already starting to feel heavy, the PESO Model® Certification is where you build the system before the season hits.
Start now, and you’ll walk into Q4 with the framework already running.
And if it helps to do it with a holiday playlist and a batch of cookies, well. I’m not here to judge.
Now a PSL in August… that might be a different story.
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